As President Bush was announcing he was invoking the Taft-Hartley Act to temporarily resolve the West Coast port lockout, the dockworkers union said it was offering to come back to work for 30 days under their old contract, providing a confusing flurry of statements and reactions.

Just one day after charging a board of inquiry with the task of looking at the impact of the West Coast port lockout, reports said that President Bush may ask a judge to force the Pacific Maritime Association to let its employees come back to work.

The impact of the closure of 29 ports on the West Coast continues to grow as negotiations made little progress Thursday.

Another day passed without a resolution to the Pacific Maritime Association's lockout of dockworkers and some factories said they were beginning to feel the pinch.

William J. Canary, president of the American Trucking Associations, sent a letter to President Bush Wednesday seeking his intervention into the potentially crippling West Coast port lockout, the American Trucking Associations said.

Representatives of the West Coast dockworkers union walked out of a meeting with the Pacific Maritime Association and a federal mediator Tuesday, taking the shutdown of 29 Pacific ports into its fourth day, Bloomberg reported.

A lockout by the Pacific Maritime Association continued into Tuesday morning as the sides could not come to an agreement in sporadic talks Monday, Bloomberg reported.

The Pacific Maritime Association imposed its second lockout of the weekend late Sunday, saying that the 29 ports it represents on the West Coast would stay shut until its dockworkers' union agreed to extend its expired contract while a new one is talked out, the Associated Press reported.

The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its September consumer confidence index hit a 10-month low, falling to 93.3 from a revised reading of 94.5 in August.

The Conference Board said its index of leading economic indicators fell by 0.2% in August, marking the third straight monthly drop.